Exhibition curated by Naomi Hume and John Butler-Price.
Max Liebermann (1847-1935), the German Jewish artist who shocked audiences in the 1870s with his somber and rough-textured depictions of workers and later rose to prominence with light-infused scenes of leisure that evoke the style of the French Impressionists, is the subject of this exhibition. He gained further fame as a society portraitist in the first decades of the twentieth century and was elected president of the Prussian Academy of the Arts, a post from which he was forced to resign in 1932 under pressure of anti-Semitic laws. Items from the Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica present an extensive array of Liebermann's graphic works, including self-portraits and illustrations for German literature. A selection of Liebermann's letters affords a glimpse into the conditions of the artist's professional and personal life.